


Turn of the Year

by kototyph



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Hunter Dean Winchester, Longest Night Rituals, M/M, Mild Eldritch Horror, The Author Has Read Terry Pratchett, Winter Solstice, Witch Castiel (Supernatural), Yule
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22082233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: Fifteen minutes later, Dean gets back in the car with empty hands and ice in his fucking eyebrows. “Get the map out,” he says through chattering teeth, sticking numb fingers under his arms.Sam holds up the battered 1995 Rand MacNally they keep in the side pocket, turned to a page of uninterrupted green. “We’re going to die,” he announces.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 17
Kudos: 201
Collections: 2019 Supernatural & CWRPF Holiday Exchange





	Turn of the Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deans-jiggly-pudding](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=deans-jiggly-pudding).



The Impala coasts to a stop at the side of a narrow road, down in the bottom of what would have been a holler if they were anywhere near Kentucky or the Virginias. These woods are colder, snow mounded up under their trunks and blowing in dry, sparkling drifts across the unmarked lane, and they haven’t seen so much as a rusted-out mailbox in ten miles. The asphalt ribbon spooling up the mountain is the only sign of civilization.

“I told you so,” Sam says, into the resigned silence that fills the car.

“Not helpful,” Dean says, glaring down at his instrument panel like a healthy dose of fear is all the old girl needs to suddenly discover that no, she isn’t really out of gas in the middle of fucking nowhere, an hour after Dean had seen that last rundown gas station and thought, _eh, bet we can make it somewhere better._

“Oh, _that’s_ not going to cut it,” Sam says with deliberate mildness, turning in his seat. “I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me I was right. Because we can’t run the heater without any gas, we had to throw away our sleeping bags and blankets after Shreveport, and my phone hasn’t had a signal in half an hour. And at least if you give me the satisfaction, I might not be stuck haunting some _goddamn forrest—!”_

Sam shouts the last few words as Dean wrenches the door open against the bitter wind and shoulders his way out, heading for the trunk. He’d forgotten about Shreveport, but the situation isn’t as bad as all that— there might be a gas can with just enough sloshing in the bottom to get the engine started, at least, and a tarp or two usually saved for messy clean-ups they can huddle under. 

Fifteen minutes later, Dean gets back in the car with empty hands and ice in his fucking eyebrows. “Get the map out,” he says through chattering teeth, sticking numb fingers under his arms.

Sam holds up the battered 1995 Rand MacNally they keep in the side pocket, turned to a page of uninterrupted green. “We’re going to die,” he announces.

“Fucking _thanks,_ sunshine,” Dean bites out. “Anything else helpful?”

“I hope this road gets more use than it looks like,” Sam says gloomily, and slumps back against the seat.

Dean watches snowflakes skitter across the windshield, shoulders hunched up to keep his neck warm. Outside, the light is already sliding from pearl grey to slate. It’ll be dusk soon. “We could get out and walk back to the houses we saw on the way.”

Sam lifts his head to give Dean an incredulous look. “Yeah? The one five miles back with no roof, or the one five miles after that with one wall standing?”

“You really want to just sit here?”

Sam makes a show of looking from left to right and waves a hand with exaggerated confusion. “Well, I don’t know, Dean. Hard choice between conserving heat and staying visible versus freezing to death in an abandoned building.”

“It’s not that cold out there,” Dean says defensively.

“You look like Jack Nicholson at the end of _The Shining_ ,” Sam counters. “Do you really want to try your luck in this?”

He nods at the windshield, where the snow is starting to come down harder, sticking in the hollows of the wipers and building up fast. The flakes caught in the folds of Dean’s jacket are melting onto his jeans in icy streaks. “Fine,” he says, hunching deeper into his collar. “We’ll stay.”

“Put the cones out.”

Dean scowls. “You put the cones out!”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “... rock-paper-scissors you for it.”

“You’re on, fucker.”

* * *

After he puts the little yellow cones behind and in front of the car— for what little good it will do in the low light and drifting snow— Dean curls up against the driver’s side door and glowers at Sam doing the exact same thing across from him. They don’t talk. They watch the road in front and behind, the worn pavement gradually disappearing under white. Eventually, Sam’s eyelids start to droop, and his breathing slows. When his chin dips to his chest, Dean nudges him. 

“No tauntauns, no sleeping.”

“Issnot that cold,” Sam grumbles, not opening his eyes. “Yet. We can sleep.”

Dean nudges him harder. “We have to stay awake in case anyone comes by.”

“Yeah, and you can take first watch,” Sam says, pulling his coat up over his face. 

“Sam—” His baby brother flips him off and Dean makes a face. “Fine then, bitch.”

Sam mumbles back something derogatory, legs bending awkwardly into the footwell. Eventually, he starts to snore.

Dean watches him, the snowflakes blowing in the window behind him, the gathering dark under the trees beyond. The temperature drops, slow but inexorable, until his fingers start to ache and his ears go numb. 

He might sleep, or at least doze off and on, jerking awake when he thinks he hears the crackle of tires on ice, or a light coming down the road. Neither actually materializes. The snow comes down, the hours drift by, and night creeps in from the forest to swallow the car whole.

Dean’s been staring blearily over Sam’s shoulder into almost-total darkness for what feels like forever when he sees it. He slowly straightens, leaning forward across the seat.

“Hey,” he whispers to Sam. “Wake up.”

Sam twitches, but doesn’t respond, Dean taps him sharply on the leg, still looking out the window.

“Fugoff,” Sam groans, shifting away. 

“Wake the fuck up. I think I see something.”

Sam moves, a vague outline in the dark, and Dean thinks he’s squinting at him over the top of his coat. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Dean says, eyes on the maybe-glow through the trees. “Look behind you.”

Sam pushes himself up in the seat and wiggles until he’s facing the window. He rubs at the glass where condensation has made a thin layer of frost, brings his face down to the cleared patch. “Where?”

Dean points, not that that’s much help. “Further down in the gulch, maybe fifty yards in. See it?”

It’s a dim light, orange like an old streetlamp. The wind rises for a moment and it disappears, reappears as trees bend and sway.

“I see it,” Sam says, and doesn’t sound happy. “It’s not bright enough for a house. Could just be storage, or a barn, and we’d be shit out of luck.”

“You think we aren’t shit out of luck right now?”

Sam looks around the Impala, the thick crust of snow that’s built up around the windows. “Point.”

The knife-edge of wind that slices across Dean’s face as he cracks open the door is almost enough to make him change his mind, but he was starting to shiver even inside the car— they need to get under something better than American steel on wheels. He hears Sam swear ripely from the windward side of the car, but it’s followed by a door slam and the crunch of his footsteps. There’s nothing to do but follow suit.

The snow, powder over old, icy buildup, is up around Dean’s ankles on the roadbed and immediately to his knees as they ease off of it and into the transitional brush. Their Maglites are totally dead, another stroke of luck, but Dean has an LED crank light that gets brighter as he winds it, his bare knuckles already smarting with the new exposure. Sam follows a few feet behind with his own LED, trudging through Dean’s footprints. It’s slow going, the footing uncertain and the bushes and saplings dragging at their clothes— in Sam’s case, hair— until they break through into the true woods. 

The light in the trees grows more solid as they move forward, but what Dean thought was the wind moving branches might actually be a flicker. Echoing the thought, behind him Sam mutters, “Is it just me, or does that look like a fire?”

“That or electrical problems,” Dean says, teeth grit tight against the chattering that wants to come again. He’s caked in snow to the crotch, now, and the wet spots on his jeans have frozen. Breaking through the snow crust with every step is winding him more quickly than he expected, too, and the exertion that should be making him warmer feels like it’s just leeching what little heat he has into the deep stillness of the forest. It’s not the coldest he’s ever been— not yet— but if the flickering light doesn’t belong to someone with central heating and clothes to spare, the Winchesters are going to be in serious trouble.

The walk— march, really— feels like it stretches on for a long, long time, though it shouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes even over bad terrain and one almost-slip into a hidden ravine. Their boots skid on roots and frozen streambeds and Dean scrapes his palms raw on trunks as he manages to catch himself, on wind-scoured ice like an open iron maiden when he doesn’t. It hurts, but his whole body hurts. 

“It really is a fire,” Sam says as they come close enough to see the wild shadows twisting across pristine snow, glimpses of red-gold flame through tangles of branches. Dean glances back at him; his brother looks pale and wary in the blue glow of the LED.

“That’s a big fucking fire, then,” Dean says.

He’s not wrong— they come to a final ring of hundred-year oaks and the blaze towers above them, spitting sparks high into the cloudy sky. The heat is sudden and intense, strong enough that the snow thins and disappears in front of them to reveal faded yellow grass in a rough circle around a slightly sunken pit. The logs are piled in a rough pyramid, the ones at the bottom easily three feet across and twice as long. The amount of char and ash at the base says it’s been burning for hours; Dean thinks he would have seen something this big burning long before the sun went down, but that’s the least odd thing about it.

“Should we get closer?” Sam asks in a low voice, right at Dean’s shoulder. Like Dean, he’s keeping deliberately short of the clear space around the fire, eyeing the scene with his boots crusted over in snow and hands shoved deep in his pockets.

Dean scans the clearing and the trees ringing it for any sign of life— parked cars, tire tracks, tackle, cooking utensils, tables, chairs. There’s nothing. Just a them and a big, big fire, in a perfect circle in the middle of the woods.

“Anything handy in the lore about bonfires?” he asks, still scanning the area.

“Oh, lots,” Sam answers. “Most of it about burning bodies.”

“Wonderful,” Dean says. “Stick close.”

He steps onto the pale grass, unzipping his jacket as he goes. He reaches inside and registers the absence of the Colt’s comforting grip— left it in the car and God that’s stupid, so fucking stupid— right as something steps out of the shadows directly across from him, mirroring him through the fire.

Dean grabs the bowie knife at his hip instead, because he might be stupid but he’s not crazy enough to leave the car without any weapon on him, and the tall figure says, “Well met, traveler.”

“... hi,” Dean says, arm crossed awkwardly over his body, hilt digging into his abraded palm. 

The flames twist between them, revealing few details— a narrow-muzzled skull with canines as long as Dean’s hand hangs where a face would be, eyesockets dark and empty. Fur and leather gleam like they’ve been oiled and suggest the lines of arms and legs. Feathers fan out from around the naked bone like a mane, wound around its angles with braided cord.

“I apologize for my abruptness,” the figure says, voice deep and smooth. “Unfortunately, you have arrived late in the proceedings.”

“Sorry. Must have lost my invite,” Dean says, keeping his hand under his coat. “Knew I was forgetting something.”

“The invitation is the light.” The skull turns towards the oaks and bobs, like the person underneath has nodded. “And now time grows short. We must join the dance.”

“Uh, Sam?” Dean asks under his breath, angling his head back. “What’s the tricorder say, man?”

Sam doesn’t answer, because Sam isn’t there— not beside him or behind him, or anywhere in sight when Dean spins around and stares at the suddenly empty space. “Sam? _Sam!”_

The woods take and absorb the sound, not even an echo making it back to him. When he turns to face the figure, the knife is out and held at his side. 

“Where is he?” he demands, flat.

“In the grove,” the figure says slowly. “As are you. Drawing a weapon inside the circle is forbidden.”

“Whoopsie doodle,” Dean says, taking a step closer. Smoke starts to sting his eyes, and heat bleeds through his clothes to his skin in a sluggish wave. The figure hesitates, then steps up to the edge of the burning logs— mirroring him again. Dean can tell by the way it moves there’s a man under all the fur and teeth. Something man-shaped, at least. “Totally my bad. Bring him back and I’ll tuck this thing away, promise.”

“He’s here,” the man says with a slightly impatient edge. “He’s a part of the dance now, too. As long as he does not break our covenants, he will emerge unharmed when we welcome the day. If you want the same for yourself, you’ll put away the knife.”

“That a threat, buddy?” Dean says, staring hard into those empty sockets.

“If you wish to take it so,” the man answers. “But can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

The figure turns his head to the side again, to the trees that surround them. “The coming dark.”

The way he says it, there are almost audible capital letters. Dean lets out a short laugh. “Yeah, funny how that happens when the sun goes down.”

“Yes,” the man says gravely. “The sun is gone, and the longest night of the year is here. We are in danger unless we join the dance.”

Dean wants to snap that the only one in danger here is this fucking freak, because the only dance Dean’s doing is right through the damn fire to aerate his lungs if he doesn’t cough up Sam in the next three seconds. But Dean’s eyes are drawn along the skull’s sightlines to the edges of clearing, where the oaks stand in silent watch. 

“What the hell?” he says.

The space between the gnarled trunks looks… wrong, somehow, like his eyes are playing tricks on him. The word is not _night_ , or _dark_ or _shadowed_ or _dim_. Beyond the oak trees, the world disappears into something like the total absence of light, a negative reflection of the fire. There are things moving in its awful, red-edged blackness, or maybe the blackness itself is seething, testing the edges of the firelight. It’s all Dean can see outside of the oaks, no matter what direction he looks, and it hurts to look too long. 

When he turns to look behind him, at the way he and Sam had come, he nearly trips into the fire backing away. The not-fire looks more malevolent up close; something about the way it eddies at the border of the grass makes him think of hands, clawing, grasping, greedy. 

“What,” he croaks, “is _that?”_

“A night without end,” the man says softly. “The end of all things. It is death.”

Dean is breathing hard and his pulse is throbbing in his ears, a primal kind of panic crawling through his system and willing him to run. There’s nowhere to run to— they’re surrounded, hemmed in on all sides. Where the heat of the fire is still overwhelming at his back, Dean swears he can feel the thing outside the trees on his face like the cold, rotting exhale of a dead man.

“Will you dance?” says the man.

“Fuck,” Dean says shakily. “Yeah, I’ll fucking dance. You want the cha-cha slide or the hokey-pokey?”

“Perhaps later. I’ll take your hand to start with,” the man says, a thread of amusement in his low voice.

When Dean looks back, the fire between them has shrunk to something low and tame. The man stands only a few feet away, and looks even wilder up close: the skull polished to a glossy ivory, leather plated up his forearms to the elbow, feathers lying sleek against thick fur. His skin only shows at the neck, where a line of dark paint has been drawn up his throat, and at his hand, extended over the fire for Dean’s.

Dean stares, taking it all in. The man watches him steadily through holes Dean hadn’t seen before, carved deep in the skull.

“Take off the headgear,” he says, impulsively.

The man’s hand drops slightly. “Why?” he asks, sounding puzzled.

“Why have it in the first place?” Dean counters.

“It’s tradition,” he says slowly. “It was my father’s.”

“So, not essential,” Dean says. “Come on, take it off. I like to see who I’m dancing with.”

The man considers him for another moment, then reaches behind the skull and hooks his fingers in its back edge. He pulls it up and away, and tosses it aside.

“We need to join the dance,” the man says, extending his hand again. He has clear, almost crystalline eyes and an angular face, a jawline to cut marble. His hair is short and he’s cleanshaven; somehow, Dean was expecting a beard. At least a ponytail. “Drop the knife.” 

“Yeah,” Dean breathes. His pulse hasn’t slowed, and his heart is starting to beat a rhythm he can almost hear. “I’m Dean. What’s your name?”

“It’s Castiel,” the man says, gaze flickering to something behind Dean and back in a way that sends a chill down Dean’s spine. “Give me your hand, Dean— _now.”_

Dean drops the knife and reaches for Castiel, and grips back just as hard when Castiel’s strong fingers close around his. He feels the contact like a shock up his arm; the pulse in his ears beats cupped in their palms, too— steady, even, getting louder.

“What do I do?” he asks.

“Just follow my lead,” Castiel tells him, and moves. 

It’s an old and simple dance, something from a time long before dance halls and ballrooms and village squares. They step in circles with the fire hot between them— not nearly as painful as it should be— alternating the lead foot, until Dean follows Castiel’s cue to switch hands and circle back. It’s easier than it should be, like his body remembers something his brain doesn’t. They press apart, and pull together. There’s a skip they make at the same time, and another, and then Castiel faces him, holding out his other hand, and Dean jumps over the fire without thinking.

Like that, like magic, they’re not alone in the clearing. Castiel and the dance still have Dean’s full attention, their shared heartbeat now a drumbeat, but he sees the shadows of people— fur, feathers, bone— out of the corner of his eyes and behind Castiel’s head. They dance past in pairs, then lines, then circles that widen and widen.

The circle swings wide, and someone else bumps into his free side. Dean looks over, then up, and Sam gasps, “Next stop we fill up the gas can,“ half-smothered by the pipes that have risen above the drumbeats.

“Twelve gas cans,” Dean pants. There’s a petite woman dancing at Sam’s side, narrow, graceful horns arcing up from skull over her face. Castiel draws them into a long spiraling loop around the bonfire, the dancers knitting together and spinning apart at dizzying speed. It’s leaping again with flames as tall as the trees, as tall as the sky; the stars blaze like embers burning holes in the night, eating it away. Dean lets go of Sam at the same time Sam lets go of him, and they spin away, the dancers falling back into pairs to step in that pattern Dean doesn’t know but can follow all the same. The dance begins to collapse towards the center, towards the huge, all-consuming fire, and Dean doesn’t hesitate for a second before he jumps again. Castiel’s hand stays solid and real when everything else dissolves in light, holding him fast.

* * *

Dean wakes up buried in flannel bedding so plaid even Bobby Singer would have winced. The fabric is soft and smells powerfully of woodsmoke, and he’s swaddled up to his nose; a good thing, since what little he can feel of the ambient air in the room seems as cold as the car was last night. 

He opens his eyes in a cautious squint, and sees nothing but sunlight. _“Ugh,”_ he says, and pulls the sheets all the way over his head. The body next to his chuckles, and the vibrations run through the mattress and wherever their skin presses together: knees to calves, arms to hips, Dean’s forehead to the swell of Castiel’s ribs. Castiel’s hand is running up the knobs of Dean’s spine under the sheets like he’s counting them, slow and deliberate.

“I feel like I ran a marathon,” Dean complains, rolling to bury his face in Castiel’s chest. “My legs are _killing_ me.”

“We led the dance most of the night,” Castiel says. His hand reaches the nape of Dean’s neck and squeezes gently. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we made several miles out of it, in the end.”

Dean sighs, and it makes Castiel’s stomach twitch under his mouth. “You really do that every year?”

“Someone has to,” Castiel says simply. 

Dean risks another peek above the sheets. The man is sitting up against the headboard, looking out the low window by the bed, barechested and tousle-haired. Dark blue paint is still smeared over his throat and collarbones, lines as thick as a fingertip drawn over his Adam's apple to his bottom lip. There’s a steaming mug of coffee on the wide windowsill, along with a discarded crown of evergreen and bright berries. Outside, the tops of trees touched with hoarfrost stretch out as far as the eye can see under a perfect, cloudless sky. 

“We found your car this, by the way,” Castiel says, raising the mug to his lips. He doesn’t seem at all bothered by the cold. “Sam told us where to look, and Inias towed it to the yard. In the future, you might consider carrying extra fuel when traveling through this part of the state. We’re careful, but distance can get a bit… unreliable during powerful workings.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Dean mumbles. Castiel’s fingers are carding through Dean’s hair, smoothing stray strands from Dean’s face. “Don’t suppose you got a schedule for those.”

“The Wheel. I’ll make you one,” Castiel promises, setting the mug aside. “Next is Imbolc. Our observation of that feast day is considerably less strenuous, though it does focus more on… fertility.”

“Sounds great,” Dean says. He tips his face up as Castiel leans down, and there’s still a low drumbeat between them when they meet, in their mouths and on their tongues. Castiel smiles against his lips, and Dean laughs softly. “Sounds amazing.”

**Author's Note:**

> And per Sir Terry, one of the ways sweethearts can announce their intentions or get married is by jumping over a fire together.


End file.
